Dharun Ravi trial highlights need to rethink bias law

TruTV In SessionThe only image allowed to be captured of M.B. was his hands, which were broadcast on TruTV as he testified.

It’s hard to find anything to like about Dharun Ravi, based on what we’ve heard at trial so far.

At a minimum, his actions were creepy. At the maximum, illegal. But at least one thing is clear: Ten years in prison would be ridiculous.

Sure, Ravi acted like a jerk. He shouldn’t have spied on Tyler Clementi kissing another man in their shared dorm room at Rutgers. But the fact that this nonviolent act could even conceivably send him to prison for such a long time is way out of line.

Ravi’s use of a webcam sounds like an invasion of privacy. It was certainly obnoxious. But why does it deserve the extra bias charge, which could end in the same sentence we give to rapists, pedophiles and attempted murderers?

It’s important to remember that, although Clementi committed suicide, Ravi isn’t charged in his roommate’s death.

Ten years in prison? That’s what the former deputy chief of the South Plainfield Rescue Squad got for sexually assaulting two boys. That’s what a 17-year-old from New Brunswick was sentenced to after he told a younger teen, "I don’t like you," and shot him in the back.

Which leads us to believe New Jersey’s bias statute deserves a second look. It’s unlikely legislators ever thought much about the logic of making a nonviolent offense the basis for a hate crime and a 10-year prison sentence. The statute simply makes a broad chunk of our criminal code subject to harsher penalties, if labeled a bias crime. You wonder, how could offenses such as "lewdness" or "damaging or removing traffic signals" even be hate crimes?

This is a poster case in the dangers of giving prosecutors so much discretion.

The use of this statute against Ravi — inflating his potential penalty to a decade behind bars — violates our basic sense of fair play.

It’s not clear that he was motivated by bigotry. But even if he were, if his expression of that went only so far as this webcam stunt, it’s still no justification for such a heavy sentence.

The severe penalty he’s facing is based on political pressure, not prosecutorial discretion. The biggest crime in this trial is overkill.